toebert

UK, monthly. The day changes between employers but most have been around the end of the month.

I’ve never had overtime pay but I also never did overtime, not sure if it’s a thing. I’ve had on-call though, payment for it depends per employer.

Scotland, the getting to the doctor is variable. Many GPs are overrun with patients. Same day appointments are pretty much if you’re lucky or if you have an actual emergency. If you just want a checkup, most of the time you can get an appointment within a week or two (or at least at my GP).

Hospital referrals can take ages, once again if it’s serious or urgent you’ll be seen, but otherwise it can take a very long time (like I had them get back to me 2 years after I got the referral at some point for something). You also don’t know how long is the queue in front of you.

It’s very variable though, I lived in a different town before and there I could walk in to the GP an be seen the same day after waiting 1-2 hours every time. That was before Brexit and COVID though.

Cost wise, all free (other than taxes). Any prescription you just walk into the pharmacy and get it for free.

The specific tax for this is around 8% (not strictly true as it covers other things than just healthcare though, like unemployment and other social benefit stuff). That being said, you get the benefit even if you are not paying the tax, students, unemployed etc.

China is the same, but the western world is in a race to the bottom so at least we can wave to them as we pass them on the way down.

I disagree on the light bulbs, but I agree on your reasoning. It’s actually really useful to have lights change the white tone over the course of the day so you get cold white during the day and warm in the evening. Also that my lights can turn on minimum dimness, and the warmest they can be automatically when I turn them on in the middle of the night.

That being said, I’d much rather that light bulbs were semi-smart (i.e. have these capabilities but no wireless control) and the light switches much smarter (i.e. somehow be able to control all of the bulb features, including color through the wiring). It’d allow apps being optional.

800 pounds for 64gb ddr5, what a time to be alive. Could get something a bit cheaper but it’s still crazy prices.

I moved to the NL from a poor country when 18 and my first job then was cleaning hotel rooms in Amsterdam. I had to take the train every day, for context I made about 550 euros a month (yes it’s way below minimal wage, it was a scammy company where the hours you worked were calculated based on how many rooms you cleaned and how much time they count for each, we were on 0 hours contracts).

The train for the entire month would have cost me something like 90 Euros if I recall correctly. I had discovered that since the trains were double deckers I could get on at 1 end of the train and watch which floor the conductor is coming on, then walk through the other floor to the other end of the train, repeat until I got off - so I could skim without a ticket.

It was often the same conductor on the same track and I assumed he was completely unaware of me, but one day I was so exhausted from work I missed him and he got to me and asked for my ticket - as you can imagine I couldn’t really afford the fine. I don’t know what he saw, but when I obviously couldn’t produce a ticket he said he just had to check something and basically dicked around for 2-3 mins occasionally asking me chit-chat questions until we got to the next station, then told me he has to deal with the station and he’d be back in a few mins for my ticket and winked at me. Obviously I got off and waited for the next train. I was very thankful and paid more attention going forward to avoid the situation again. Luckily my situation got better shortly after and I didn’t need to skim anymore, nor take that train.

About 2 years later I was doing well in life and was going back to the town I used to live in to meet a friend, and by luck the same conductor was there - I didn’t realise until he asked for my ticket. I repeated the situation to him to see if he recognised me and he said while he didn’t recognise me, but he remembered me. He said he saw me most days when I hid from him, but he also saw me looking beaten down, sometimes in my house cleaner uniform. He obviously couldn’t just give me a permanent free ride but he also didn’t have to run after me, so since I gave him the opportunity to turn a blind eye and it seemed like I needed it he did what he could so he wouldn’t have to fine me.

I thanked him (I was incredibly touched to learn how much he was doing for me, it wasn’t 1 time he was good to me, it was every time) and offered to treat him to dinner or drinks or something I could repay him with, but he just said he was glad to see I was doing better and to try and pay it forward if I can, said his goodbye and went on to work.

10/10 person.

I have one in the bedroom, but only because when we moved in together both my partner and I had a TV so there was an extra one.

Has not been turned on for about 2 years now though.

Chat control is absolutely going to work with some time, they can just propose it every week. It can afford to fail 100 times, it only needs to pass once - it’s not like these people run out of money. Depressing

To be fair all it takes is for enough entities to exchange it between other assets. If you are in Europe, most stores won’t sell you anything for your USD unless you exchange it into euros (except some edge cases), so it does feel kinda similar in that sense except cryptos don’t really have a “home” country where they’re universally accepted (bar some nations whose own currency has so throughly failed they adopted it).

There are some services which allow you to spend crypto by simply doing the exchange for you at the point of purchase into whatever currency the store uses (similar to visa/MasterCard/your bank doing this if you pay by card abroad).

I’ll say ultimately though it doesn’t change a lot, the idea of crypto is great and there are some where the implementation actually yields something that could be a better money (truly yours, not controlled by a government or a company necessarily, low fees, near instant transactions), but in the end there are just too many of them and they rock the boat too much for the well established financial institutions that they’re just doomed IMO.

However, the technology itself I expect will end up being used against us by the ruling class in the coming years (i.e crypto currencies controlled by the government where they can set whatever rules they want on it).

The thing I’ve found best to get people talking is asking intentional questions. As in, ask a question that you expect an answer for which might allow you to deepen the conversation on the topic.

For a concrete example, imagine you meet someone taking photos in public and you talk to each other. Asking a question like “so you like photography then?” Is probably gonna get an answer like “yeah sure”, unless the other person is keen to provide you more details. Instead, asking a question like “what is your favourite photo you ever took?” Or “what kind of photos do you enjoy taking most?” Helps the other person give a concrete answer with some prompt for detail. From the answer, you can then pick what is the part you find most interesting or most likely to be able to talk about and ask another question with the same mindset.

Hopefully they’ll also ask you something in return. If they don’t, you can attempt to share something voluntarily that’s on topic, but if they don’t engage at all it may just mean they don’t want to talk to you. In which case, end the interaction on your terms while it’s still positive and count it as a win.

AI is great, LLMs are a waste. This has been the case for years before LLMs.

LLMs which the current hype calls AI are the equivalent of a scammy car salesman. To your example of have AI teach you to code - AI is awful at coding. It produces code that is the average of a junior developer’s output. It will look awesome from the outside because it will often mostly work at first, but in reality it’s going to be an unmaintainable mess. An experienced engineer could use one and produce a good outcome, in some cases may be faster than without and in others slower - but the experienced engineer requirement is a must. What this means is your AI teacher by itself is a junior engineer, whose output wouldn’t be trusted by themselves. That’s the level you’ll reach and may even learn and pick up terrible habits that’ll set you back.

It will do all that and consume a ridiculous amount of resources for it compared to following a YouTube course.

I imagine a similar case is true for most industries, people who work in the industry see the absolute garbage coming out of it in large quantities and have to listen to people from the outside who don’t know what good looks like in that context keep saying “oh you are now redundant cuz look how good ai is”.

Meanwhile, it is trained on data stolen from the people who are now losing their jobs because the idiotic decision makers are on the side of believing how good the output looks like. AND there is more, it’s doing it wasting a massive amount of resources, which drives up the prices for everyone (think all electrical devices needing computers, electricity prices). But what what money are they using for it? Oh yes! The money generated out of thin air by the corporations generating this massive AI bubble, which is most likely going to end with a crash that will decimate the market (and therefore the investments and pensions of people). And if the past is any indication, the government will prop the companies up with tax money - so people will pay for it twice.

The fact that he didn’t do it by himself tells you he did not wear it with any previous partners who didn’t make him. So yes, that puts his likelihood of STD rather high.

You were 100% right to make him wear one.

Thank you for the succinct answer!

Do these lawsuits backfire if the ones suing lose? Cuz this is very clearly not on valve to sort but the games. I’m guessing they are hoping to strike gold with 1 lawsuit as opposed to having to go after the game developers individually, who may just stop using their work in the future which valve can’t do… because they don’t use their work already.

But is it just a case you made lawsuit you lost, oh well some lawyer fees and it’s over? Or do they have to pay valve for wasting their time and their legal expenses too?